"What have they done for me?'' he said. "Absolutely nothing. It's in the ground under my home. They've told me it could be there for 80, 90 years.'''

The DEP will discuss its plans Thursday at an informational meeting and a formal public hearing, both of which will be held at City Hall.

What these meetings will do is let the DEP explain its plans to issue a stewardship permit to the current owner of the property -- CR USA and Crown Holdings of Philadelphia ( formerly Crown Risdon Corp.)

A stewardship permit will allow the DEP to write a long-term management plan for CR USA to follow on the property.

Jan Czeczotka, assistant director in the DEP's remediation division, said the permit helps both the owner of the property and the DEP.

"It allows the owners to do some long-term planning,'' Czeczotka said. "And it allows us to lay out clearly and concisely what we expect. That means the owners don't have to keep calling us up, asking What do you want us to do?' And that frees us up to do other things.''

Risdon made cosmetic containers on Old Newtown Road from 1956 to 2005. The process involved electroplating, chrome and silver plating, polishing and buffing, degreasing and solvent stripping. The factory is now closed and the property is for sale.

To handle the wastes it produced, Risdon had two sludge lagoons, and a sludge drying bed and incinerator, operating under the federal Resources Conservation and Recovery Act. It closed the lagoons and incinerator in the mid-1980s.

Carolyn Casey, an environmental engineer with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Boston -- who has advised the DEP on the Risdon site -- said over the years the chemical solvents and degreasers Risdon used infiltrated the groundwater system. The pollution then migrated underground into the neighborhood.

Because the neighborhood has city water, the solvents did not pollute drinking wells. But the solvent vapors emanating from the ground were polluted as well.

Torcasio said he now has a fan system, similar to the ones used to clean the air of radon, in his basement to clear his house of those vapors.

Under the stewardship plan CR USA will have to hire and engineer to create a plan to deal with the sludge lagoons on the site, including capping the lagoons and containing any pollution left in them.

The company must also install pumping systems to contain the remaining pollution on site, rather that letting it continue to pollute the neighborhood groundwater system, Casey said.

It must identify any other areas of pollution on the site and remedy that pollution, as well.

In an e-mail, Casey said CR USA "as been working very cooperatively with the EPA and the CT DEP conducting voluntary corrective action over these past several years.

"Now that they are getting closer to completing the investigation and remediation both on and off-property, they have also been working very cooperatively with us on the Stewardship Permit application,'' Casey wrote.

Torcasio said he has met with Casey and lawyers "in three-piece suits'' about the pollution and left the meeting disillusioned.

"She is on Risdon's side,'' he said of Casey. "I thought she was supposed to be on my side."

He said he cannot sell his house, which has been on the market for three years, because of the pollution.

"By law, you have to reveal it,'' he said. "When you do, no one's going to get a mortgage for this property. Especially in these times.''